During the despicable blockade of the Crescent City Connection the Thursday after Hurricane Katrina a Gretna police officer fired a shot over the heads of pedestrians trying to flee the chaos that had descended upon New Orleans. As Saturday's story about that incident puts it, "no one was hurt." Accurate in the technical sense but not altogether true.

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Nobody was injured when the police officer fired his weapon, it's true, but the hurt? The hurt caused by the blockade was and remains incalculable.

Consider the message the police conveyed with their actions: Your distress, your fear, your peril, they all mean nothing to us. Go back to where you came from. You'll find no refuge here.

How could it not hurt when you find yourself in a life-threatening crisis and the police you encounter are indifferent to your survival? Is this not America? Exactly which American value is it that inspires law enforcement to brandish weapons at those seeking safety and then forcing them back into danger?

Over the past year, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's office and local U.S. Attorney Jim Letten have helped bring forth justice for Henry Glover, justice for Raymond Robair, justice for Ronald Madison, James Brissette and four others shot by New Orleans police officers on the Danziger Bridge.

But there will be no justice for those wrongly turned away on the Crescent City Connection. Attempts to punish the involved departments proved unsuccessful, and on Friday Letten said that his office would not prosecute the officers involved in the blockade.

"This is not a commentary on what should have happened or how people behaved or should have behaved," Letten said. "It was simply a statement that federal prosecution would not be appropriate in this case."

Letten might not intend his announcement to vindicate the officers and their departments, but surely he knows that that's how they'll categorize it.

"I'm certainly pleased that the Justice Department as well said we didn't do anything wrong," Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson said Friday, "because we've felt from the beginning that we didn't."

Letten didn't say that Gretna police did nothing wrong. He said prosecution would be inappropriate. That's not the same thing. In fact, you can make a convincing argument that the blockade was wrong but that the officers shouldn't be singled out and criminally charged for following Lawson's orders.

What happened that Thursday after Katrina was an institutional decision, and, it's Lawson, the leader, who deserves opprobrium -- even if his heartlessness falls short of criminality.

Hurricane Katrina served as proof that a catastrophe cannot create neighborliness where it doesn't already exist. The levees happened to break in New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish, but they could have broken in Jefferson Parish. They could have broken on the West Bank.

It could have been West Bankers fleeing floodwaters and mayhem trying to cross the river into New Orleans. What would they be saying if New Orleans police did to them what some have cheered Lawson for doing to those attempting to leave New Orleans?

How can people so vulnerable to destruction themselves be so inhospitable and hard-hearted toward those trying to get out of harm's way?

Did Gretna police officers break the law when they turned those pedestrians away? Letten, apparently, believes that they did not.

But questions about the blockade's legality have never been as important as questions about its morality.

Blocking people's escape from trouble is wrong. We don't need a criminal trial to tell us that.